Is eSports Here to Stay?

The elite pros make a good living. Millions are tuning into championship games, both in person and online. Investors are coughing up cash to get a piece of the action. But this isn’t traditional sporting. Welcome to professional video gaming, or eSports.

The arena goes dark, illuminated only by projectors on the stage. A growing murmur rises from the tens of thousands of spectators in the audience. At home and in bars all around the world, another million viewers are holding their collective breath.

In a ceremonial voice, Nick “Tasteless” Plott and Daniel “Artosis” Stemkoski announce the players coming up on stage as the audience roars with excitement. Tonight, the winner will go home with $100,000 and the most prestigious title: World Champion.

This isn’t Wimbledon, it’s eSports

This scene could be a professional football, basketball, or tennis championship broadcast on a major TV network and endorsed by a brand of watered-down beer. But it isn’t. Instead, the audience is rooting for players of a video game called StarCraft II. The announcers, both from the US, are called shoutcasters.

Electronic sports (abbreviated eSports), is essentially competitive video gaming. Since the late nineties, eSports has been growing; at first in South Korea and, more recently, in North America and Europe with games like Starcraft II, League of Legends, and DotA 2.

Speaking to Forbes, shoutcaster Sean “Day[9]” Plott said, “eSports work for the same reasons that sports work. There is something tribal about gathering with your friends and hanging out and taking sides and rooting for your heroes.”

In November, we talked about the rise of Transmedia as a new genre. We do not yet know how much that will change the world of story telling as we know it, but we are pretty convinced it is opening some interesting new ways of communicating.

Similarly, we do not know if eSports will remain popular forever, but all signs point to its staying power:

Finally, eSports is based on a solid platform that is now well established: video games. To understand just how big the potential market is, consider that here in San Francisco from March 25 to March 29, the Game Developers Conference, or GDC, the largest and longest-running professionals-only game industry event, attracts over 22,500 attendees with more than 400 lectures, panels, tutorials,and round-table discussions. So yeah, I think eSports is here to stay, and I’m a fan.

Find out more about swissnex San Francisco’s event series around gaming and GDC.

About author

Johann Recordon

Johann Recordon was a Junior Project Manager at swissnex San Francisco and now works for Lift in Switzerland. When not bringing interesting people together, Johann looks for the next idea that will change the way we interact with one another. He is a passionate gamer, hiker, and healthy lifestyle advocate.